SOUTH AMERICA ON TWO WHEELS: BARILOCHE TO TREVELIN

Editor’s Note: Our South America on Two Wheels Series Continues with Adventure Writer, Timothy Darrin. 

Motorcycle Adventure Riders

“The pace has been wicked, not the riding pace, well maybe that too but mostly the ride all day, get to town late, grab a shower hit a restaurant, that doesn’t open until 8:30ish.  Then it’s back to hotel and exhausted for bed.  Get up 6:00 to pack, leave by 9:00 and do it all over again.  I have packing down to about a 45-minute ordeal each morning, hence the early wake up.

Making dust!

Not sure how it goes “Argentina don’t cry for me” or “Ole Suzanna, don’t you cry for me”.  I’ll explain the crying part later.  The roads, I mean the major routes down here are maybe more than half gravel.  Sometimes the rocks are not really compacted, and it requires some skill to ride the loose stuff.  I do have some dirt bike experience and I have ridden the Dalton Highway to Deadhorse, Alaska, so have some experience, enough to know that shit can happen in a split second.  Luck is part of it.  Luck was not on Susanna’s side crossing the border headed back  into Chile.  Now there are three riders who work for Google.

What happened to Suzanna? Not quite sure, but she was ahead of group, I’m usually the rear, stopping for photos here and there. When I arrived at our border control stop I saw there was a crashed motorcycle on the ground near a construction zone.  The ambulance was in the process of carting Suzanna off to the nearest hospital. It was amazing that it arrived within an hour.  It easily could have taken half a day out way out here.  It turns out she had a broken collar bone, two broken ribs and a concussion.  An extremely sobering beginning to the trip.

Timothy Darrin, Adventure Rider

However, I had a great ride with lots of photos of the Patagonian countryside that just seems to get more amazing around every turn.  The views, vistas and mountains were like I had never seen. Really blow your mind stuff and so exciting was every kilometer riding down the road, I had to focus extra hard to keep the rubber side down, where it belonged!”

• By: Timothy Darrin